Enormous effort goes into teaching language to students with ASD. That effort, though, is focused almost exclusively on spoken language. Minimal work is directed towards teaching the other form of language that is central to human communication: namely, written language. As a result, literacy in the ASD population is seriously constrained, often to the point of non-existence.
Autism is a type of disorder that interferes with a person's ability to communicate with and relate to others. Autism affects how a person perceives and processes sensory information. Signs of autism may develop before a child is three years old, although the condition is frequently not diagnosed until later. A common symptom of autism is difficulty with verbal and nonverbal communication. Without suitable training, language development in most children with autism may be delayed.
The severity of autism varies. Some individuals need assistance in almost all aspects of their daily lives, while other individuals that receive suitable training at an early age are able to function at a very high level and might attend school in a regular classroom.
The overall picture can be characterized as follows. A small percentage of students, mainly those at the highest cognitive levels, do achieve reading proficiency. Aside from this group, it is rare to find ASD children displaying any reasonable mastery of reading. Most students cluster into one of three groups.
Some fall into the group known as hyperlexics. This term refers to individuals who independently (i.e., without being taught) learn to decode, or read words. However, they show little or no comprehension of what they have decoded. Essentially these individuals are word callers who look at a text and say the words, much as if they were reading a telephone book.
Many ASD students who do not show independent mastery of reading are given instruction, generally in the form of bits and pieces of a traditional reading curriculum. For example, an entire year may be spent on teaching children to recognize the ten or twelve names of their classmates in written form. This approach, which provides a fractured and often meaningless set of skills, is not necessarily thought to be productive. Rather it is seen as the only option given the children's level of functioning.
The many ASD students who are either non-verbal or minimally verbal are essentially ignored. These students are deemed to be so limited that no discernible effort is made to teach any significant aspect of written language.
Despite what is commonly thought, this situation is not intrinsic to the students' limitations. Rather it stems in large measure from the two major systems that dominate the teaching of reading. These are phonics (which concentrates on sound analysis) and whole language (which concentrates on independent writing and complex stories). Neither system is appropriate or productive for most ASD students and so attempts to educate them via either of these systems are basically unsuccessful.
For ASD students to become literate, it is vital to move beyond the techniques offered by either phonics or whole language and instead provide students with ASD with a system that will permit them to acquire and demonstrate literacy.